Future Imperfect
by FiresofAnarchy
Summary: A collection of one shots featuring various characters from Horizon Zero Dawn.
1. Loss of Innocence

**Future Imperfect**

 **Loss of Innocence**

 **So I recently had my Spring Break and played through Horizon Zero Dawn during it. It's one of best games to come around in a long time and I only hope that the next time I go home and start playing Mass Effect Andromeda that it measures up. I also hope that since they left it open for a sequel that a sequel actually comes someday. Anybody remember the post-apocalyptic RPG Rage because I do and I'm still here waiting for a sequel to that, there's actually been some movement on that front lately but after six years I'm not getting my hopes up. Anyways I already have some other chapter ideas in mind and I hope you like this. I was listening to City of Blinding Lights by U2 while writing this.**

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Aloy stood for a moment in the villa that served as the Shadow Carja's holding facility for Olin's family as she watched said family leave to start a new life minus Olin. Olin's wife had understood that he was dead without her having to go into the details and for that she was grateful. What words of comfort could she ever offer to someone who was never going to see their husband again because of her actions? What words of comfort could she offer a child that was now fatherless because she had allowed her anger to get the better of her for one moment? She assumed there weren't any words adequate for that situation.

Her life as an Outcast had been simple, she hadn't liked it but it had been simple. At the time it had been easy to hate the Matriarchs for what they had done to her, what they had done to Rost, and what they had done to all of the other Outcasts she had ran into. Back then it was easy to blame them for all of her problems and view them as the enemy. Now, after seeing more of the world and interacting with many different kinds of people she knows it was naïve to think of the world in such black and white terms.

She had set off looking for Olin hoping that he would provide her with the answers to all of her questions about the attack on the Proving and her origin. What she had found instead was a man who wasn't entirely innocent, but wasn't entirely guilty either and had not even a fraction of the answers she had been searching for. No, those answers seemed like they would only come from delving further into the ruins of the Metal World and seeing what clues had been left behind.

Olin had reasons for his actions, good reasons, but that didn't change the fact that his actions had caused the deaths of many members of the Nora tribe and perhaps beyond. Driving her spear into his chest and ending his life right there in the middle of that Shadow Carja dig site had given her a set of confusing feelings. It had felt good to get some sort of revenge on the people that had killed so many of her tribe. Her anger at the Shadow Carja and more specifically the man who had led them to the Proving in the first place had been quenched for a brief moment.

Watching as the two figures disappeared into the horizon, however, it all felt so trivial. Olin, many of the other operatives killed at the dig site probably too, had an innocent family in all of this that was now not going to have a father and husband around because of her actions. Was she really any better than the people she was killing if she was doing it for a "nobler" cause? She figured she already knew the answer to that question and didn't like it or what it said about what she had become.

The more she learned from her explorations of various ruins told her that nothing was ever quite as simple as it appeared at first glance. The Nora viewed the Old Ones as sinners who fell because of their own arrogance. That's why ruins such as the ones she was exploring were taboo. The Matriarchs operated under the mentality that if they kept people away from the ruins and anything else associated with the Old Ones then the children of this world were less likely to repeat their mistakes or at least what they perceived as mistakes. Were they really any better than the Old Ones? She figured the answer to that mirrored the answer to her previous question.

What she had found at the ruins of Faro Automated Solutions as well as the other ruins she had stumbled across in her journey so far didn't show the kind of blanket arrogance that the Nora Matriarchs described, yet another mistake and fallacy that could be attributed to them. The Metal World was full of just as many different kinds of people as she had come across in her current travels. Ted Faro and Elisabet Sobeck represented the two opposite ends of the spectrum but they were only the extremes much like Avad and his father were.

People like Sylens further complicated the picture. He obviously had some sort of dark past that he was hiding from her, but also seemed to be trying to make up for it in his own way. And maybe people like him were the norm instead of the exception. Things weren't black and white so it only made sense that people weren't black and white either. There were numerous shades of grey for people to fall into. Perhaps the question wasn't so much whether someone was good or evil, but which shade of grey they fell into. How many shades of grey was someone like herself removed from becoming someone like Sylens or someone like Olin? Of that she couldn't be sure.

By that logic maybe no one was truly innocent and maybe everyone else throughout the world already knew that. People like Sylens and even Erend to a lesser extent didn't seem to have as many regrets about any said action they had taken or could take in the future as she did. There were things that were wrong certainly, things that Sylens was trying to atone for, but he didn't allow his guilt at that cloud his future decision making. Had she really just been so sheltered all her life that she never understood that?

Maybe she had been an innocent, naïve girl thinking that winning the Proving and becoming a member of the tribe would solve all of her problems. Maybe she had even been an innocent, naïve girl when she had first set out on her journey to find Olin despite everything that she had seen at the Proving. Maybe seeing the bulk of her tribe cut down in front of her by masked men she didn't even know the origin of should have been enough to wake her up to the realities of the world.

One thing was for sure now, no matter where this journey ended up taking her or what she uncovered along the way she would never go back to being that girl, she couldn't. It was possible for some of the Nora to still cling to the Matriarchs' teachings and their own naïve views of the world, but that wasn't possible for her anymore. She had killed a man, not in combat and not in self-defense, but only out of a burning need for some sort of justice for what had happened to her people and one blinding burst of emotion. She wasn't that innocent girl anymore and for all of her thinking, as the sun disappeared below the horizon signifying the end of one day and the potential for another, she couldn't decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe she would never know. Maybe she didn't need to.


	2. Paying Respects

**Future Imperfect**

 **Paying Respects**

 **I'm not sure how this chapter turned out, but I wanted to do something with Ersa's funeral and it only made sense to me that Avad would get himself there no matter what. I hope the actual funeral stuff turned out well too because building religious beliefs for people isn't exactly something I do every day. Anyways I was listening to There's a Place by the All American Rejects while writing this and I hope you like it.**

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He could feel the eyes of everyone he passed on him as he made his way through the village of Pitch Cliff. He was used to eyes on him, being a king didn't offer much of a modicum of anonymity on a good day and today was most certainly as far away from a good day as he could remember since overthrowing his father. The Oseram still held grudges over the horrors his father inflicted upon them, rightly so, and that only made the gazes that much harder to ignore. His entire Vanguard was stationed at various points throughout the village, but Erend was the only one that remained by his side. It was important to maintain an unintimidating presence, but the lack of direct security only made him that much more vulnerable.

It was just as well that he didn't have an entire squad of soldiers with him though, this was a personal matter and it wouldn't do anyone any good for the soldiers to see their king breaking down with emotion. Erend was leading him up a set of stairs in the direction of the building that they were holding Ersa's body in. His advisors had wanted him to make this visit more official, have a meeting with Oseram leadership to try and continue the smoothing over process, but he had refused. He wasn't here as Sun King and he wasn't here to solve diplomatic problems. He was here as Avad and he was here for her. She didn't deserve anything less.

"I'll keep guard by the door," Erend said. "You go in and do what you need to do."

He could only offer the other man a nod as he went inside the small building. He wasn't sure if Erend ever guessed the true nature of his relationship with his sister, but the other man didn't pry and understood that he needed to do something anyways when he had told him that he wanted to be there when she got her sendoff. Erend was a lot smarter than he gave himself credit for and a worthy replacement of his sister as the head of the Vanguard. It was good to still have people around him that saw him as more than just the Sun King.

He made his way over to the stone surface where Ersa's body was laying. He wasn't familiar with Oseram rituals in dealing with their dead, but Erend had made certain that she got a proper Oseram sendoff. As he made his way closer he could see the various scars across her face that hadn't been there the last time he'd seen her and felt a flash of anger at Dervahl for all that he'd done to her. That man was a crazy as his father had been and whatever the punishment the Oseram saw fit to place on him would undoubtedly be what he deserved. Maybe after they dealt with him they could finally put the Red Raids and all the horrors associated with them behind them and stop the mindless killing. If previous experience told him anything though it would never be that easy.

"Hey," he said as he sat down with his back against the stone. "It's been a while."

"I miss you," he continued. "I met someone who reminded me of you while we were trying to figure out what happened to you."

"You'd like her," he continued. "Called me out for not thinking clearly when I was so confused that I started seeing her as you."

"She's not you though, no one else will ever be," he said moving to stand up. "It's something that took me a long time to figure out, but I hope you realized how special you were to me."

"I wish we could have had more time together to realize all that we were together," he finished moving to kiss her hand. "Return to the Sun my love."

With that he exited the building and found Erend standing awkwardly straight outside of the door. He didn't much care if the other man heard everything. His entire relationship with Ersa had had to be kept a secret because of how it might look to nobles back in Meridian. He was tired of having to be what other people expected him to be, if he loved an Oseram woman then he loved an Oseram woman and there was nothing they could do to change that. If only she could have lived, they could have had a son of mixed blood to sit on the throne and things would have really come full circle. No, she was just one more thing that his father had ruined for him.

Final preparations were made with Ersa's body and Avad decided that he was going to stay around to see her sendoff through, no matter what his advisors would inevitably say when he returned to Meridian. She deserved his full attention for as long as he could give it. A group of Oseram including Erend and several other members of his Vanguard brought down the stone tablet which apparently could be picked up with her body still on display lying on top of it to some kind of small pit of fire. Avad stood stoically as he watched Erend move around to the front of the pit and clear his throat.

"My sister was special," he began. "A lot of you who knew her probably already knew that."

"She helped bring down the Mad Sun King and in the process saved us from further slaughter at his hands," he continued. "She saw more than just tribe versus tribe in an endless circle of slaughter."

"No, she saw a future, a future where we lived side by side with the Carja and the other tribes in peace," he continued. "It was a future that she died for, but it's not a future that has to die with her."

"Sun King Avad is here," Avad immediately felt all eyes on him. "And he believes in that same future that Ersa did."

"He's giving us the chance to deal with her murderer ourselves as a show of solidarity," the eyes shifted away. "And we should take his generosity as a sign of things to come."

"The Red Raids may be over, but we still have work to do and we owe it to Ersa's memory to do what we can to make the peace she fought and died for a lasting one," he finished.

An older man came out of the crowd after a few moments of cheering and moved to the space where Erend had just been.

"As we return this daughter of metal back to the fire from which she came may we remember that we will all return to that same fire one day," the man said. "It is in death that we finally become one with the metals we spend our lives working."

With that the group of men tipped the stone slab over and Ersa's body rolled into the pit. Avad felt a strange sense of solidarity with the Oseram as they broke into a mournful but peaceful song. Her body was being returned to fire and fire was a gift from the Sun, an extension of its power. Maybe their peoples weren't so different after all. There were still things to work out, challenges to come, but now singing along to a song he didn't even know he felt closer to the Oseram than he ever had before. Ersa's final gift to him and the world perhaps.

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 **I have an idea for a similar chapter centering around Aloy, but we'll see what ends up coming to me next.**


End file.
